Contents

Overview

RIFAs are more aggressive than most native ant species, and have a painful sting. An animal, including humans, typically encounters them by inadvertently stepping into one of their mounds, which causes the ants to swarm up the legs, attacking en masse. The ants respond to pheromones released by the first ant to attack and sting in concert, often killing smaller animals by overloading their immune systems.[citation needed]

RIFAs compete successfully against other ants, and have been enlarging their range.

They are a pest, not only because of the physical pain they can inflict, but also because their mound-building activity can damage plant roots, lead to loss of crops, and interfere with mechanical cultivation. It is not uncommon for several fire ant mounds to appear suddenly in a suburban yard or a farmer's field, seemingly overnight. Their stings are rarely life-threatening to humans and other large animals, causing only 80 documented[citation needed] deaths as of 2006. However, they often kill smaller animals, such as birds. They sometimes kill newborn calves if they do not get on their feet quickly enough. The sting of the RIFA has venom composed of a necrotizingalkaloid, which causes both pain and the formation of white pustules that appear one day after the sting.

Fire ants are excellent natural predators and are biological controls for pests such as the sugarcane borer, the rice stink bug, the striped earwig, aphids, the boll weevil, the soybean looper, the cotton leafworm, the hornfly, and many other pests harmful to crops. However, they also kill beneficial pollinators, such as ground-nesting bee species. Seeds, fruits, leaves, roots, bark, nectar, sap, fungi, and carrion are all fire ant prey, and they are not shy about creating their own carrion, either. They are proficient enough at overwhelming intruders that they can virtually clear an area of invertebrates, lizards, and ground-dwelling birds.

Red imported fire ants are extremely resilient, and have adapted to contend with both flooding and drought conditions. If the ants sense increased water levels in their nests, they will come together and form a huge ball or raft that is able to float, with the workers on the outside and the queen inside.[2][3] Once the ball hits a tree or other stationary object, the ants swarm onto it and wait for the water levels to recede. To contend with drought conditions, their nest structure includes a network of underground foraging tunnels that extends down to the water table. Also, although they do not hibernate during the winter, colonies can survive temperatures as low as 16 °F(−9 °C).

RIFAs were the first clearcut case discovered of a green-beard gene,[4] by which natural selection can favor altruistic behavior.

Morphology

Red imported fire ants have both a pedicel and postpediole. In other words, they belong to a group of ants that have two humps between the thorax and abdomen. The workers have ten antennal segments terminating in a two-segmented club. It is often difficult to distinguish between the red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta and some other species in the genus. A number of characters are used, but are not always consistent between the black imported fire ant (Solenopsis richteri) or hybrids between the two species. Positive identifications can be made using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to distinguish differences in the cuticular hydrocarbons.

Queen and Worker Behavior

Studies have been conducted on the sex ratios exhibited within colonies of Solenopsis invicta. More specifically, it was observed that the queen actually predicts the sex ratios. In an experiment, 24 field colonies were selected with highly biased sex ratios in a monogyne population. Eleven of these colonies were male specialists (numerical proportion of males, range: .77 to 1.0), and 13 were female specialists (numerical proportion of males, range: 0.0 to .09). After exchanging queens, twenty-two of the 24 colonies accepted the foreign queen, and 21 of these colonies produced a new batch of reproductive 5 weeks later. [5]

Luc Passera and colleagues “found that the sex ratios produced in a colony post-switching was predicted by the colony from which the queen came.” [6] For example, post-switching, a colony produced predominantly males if the queen came from a male-producing colony, and vice versa, regardless if the host colony originally produced mainly females. “By contrast, no significant change in sex ratio occurred in control colonies in which male-specialist and female-specialist colonies were given a queen from the same colony type.” [5]

Another study compared the inhibition of the number of sexuals (male and female) produced in a single queen colony and a queenless colony. Pheromones were tested to have an impact—freshly killed corpses of functional (egg-laying) queens were added daily to queenless colonies. These effectively inhibited the production of sexuals, although not as effectively as living queens. Conversely, corpses of non-egg-laying queens did not inhibit the production of sexuals. Also, the addition of queens to previously queenless colonies, which had already developed large sexual larvae, resulted in the execution of most of these larvae by workers. This indicated that the queen’s control over the production of sexuals can act retroactively, even after the larvae are sexualized. The results provide evidence that functional queens exert control over the production of sexuals in S. invicta through pheromones that influence the behaviors of workers toward both male and female larvae. [7]

The fire ant Solenopsis invicta also presents a paradox for kin selection theory. In multiple-queen (polygyne) colonies, the egg-laying queens are on average unrelated to one another, so the workers appear to raise new sexuals that are no more closely related to them than are random individuals in a population. This was tested by removing worker/queen pairs engaged in trophallaxis with foreceps, and then sampling the allele frequency to estimate for the reference population. Frequencies of the most common allele at each locus in workers from the study colonies are .89, .92, .78, .71, and .81 respectively—the frequencies of these markers have been found to conform to Hardy-Weinberg expectations in past studies. Genotypic data were used to estimate relatedness between the workers and the winged-queens they tended, and it was indistinguishable from zero. The results indicate that S. invicta workers tending queens in polygyne nests do so without respect to the relatedness of those queens. [6][8]

It has been observed that S. invicta workers not only tend to queens indiscriminately, but they also indiscriminately attack them. After temporary cooperation associations end between queens, a queen who produced more workers gained no advantage over the less productive queens. Queens producing diploid males reared fewer offspring but were as likely to survive as queens producing only workers. It would have been assumed that if workers controlled queen mortality, they would be expected to discriminate in favor of their mother, therefore increasing their inclusive fitness. This however should favor the queen with the greatest number of daughters during the period of queen execution. The data actually shows that the fights among queens themselves have a strong role in determining which queen survives—the heavier co-foundress was more likely to win. Thus, queen survival is enhanced by high fighting ability relative to co-foundresses, rather than by the number of offspring she has. Workers respond to these queen differences by attacking the previously injured queen to reinforce the effects of competition among the queens. [9]

Economic impact

Asia

Since September 2004, Taiwan has been seriously affected by the red fire ant. A few people are reported to have succumbed to venom from the ant stings. A large campaign to kill the ants has been partially effective, but it has not been able to eliminate all of them.

In China in January 2005, a controversy arose when it became known that Guangdong's provincial government had suppressed all information about the spread of fire ants in the province since the middle of 2004. Hong Kong newspapers, including Appledaily, Mingpao, Hong Kong Economic Times, Singtao and Takungpao (the latter funded by the Chinese government), have also reported the ants have been found in both Shenzhen and Wuchuan in Guangdong province.[citation needed]

Australia

An outbreak of the RIFA in Queensland, Australia, was discovered on 22 February 2001. The ants were believed to be present in shipping containers arriving at the Port of Brisbane from the United States. Anecdotal evidence suggests fire ants may have been present in Australia for six to eight years prior to formal identification. While the outbreak is restricted to a small (800 km2) region of southeast Queensland in and around Brisbane, the potential social, economic, and ecological damage prompted the Australian government to respond rapidly. The initial emergency response was followed by the formation of the Fire Ant Control Centre in September 2001. Joint state and federal funding of A$175 million was granted for a six-year eradication program involving the employment of more than 600 staff and the broad-scale baiting of approximately 678.9 km2 between 8 and 12 times, followed by two years of surveillance. Following the completion of the fourth year of the eradication program, the Fire Ant Control Centre estimated eradication rates of greater than 99% from previously infested properties. The latest (May 8) Federal budget confirmed the Program will receive extended Commonwealth funding of approximately A$10 million for at least another two years, until June 2009, to treat the residual infestations found most recently, and to fund validation of the overall treatment and surveillance program. (see:[10]) As in previous years, the States have agreed in principle to match the Federal funding. That decision is set to be ratified in June 2007.[dated info]

United States

The FDA estimates more than US$5 billion is spent annually on medical treatment, damage, and control in RIFA-infested areas. Further, the ants cause approximately US$750 million in damage to agricultural assets, including veterinary bills and livestock loss, as well as crop loss.[11]

Countermeasures

Many scientists and agencies are attempting to develop methods to stop the spread of the RIFA. Traditionally, control has been achieved through pesticide use. From the 1950s into the 1970s, Mirex was extensively used in an attempt to eradicate the species. However, the pesticide inadvertently aided the fire ants' spread by killing numerous native ant species that compete successfully with them.[12] Mirex also caused even broader ecological harm that was often attributed to the fire ants. For example, it was first thought that the ants were linked to the decline of overwintering birds (e.g. the Loggerhead Shrike), but a later study showed that the pesticides were largely to blame.[13] RIFAs have virtually no natural biological control agents native to, or naturalized in, the United States, China, Philippines, or Australia. Current research is focused on introducing biological control agents from the RIFA's native range.

Phorid flies have been introduced in many places in southeastern United States, and are slowly reproducing and spreading to cover the entire RIFA range. The amount of actual damage done to the ants by phorid flies is minimal, but the ants appear to be aware of the hovering flies, losing their social organization and ceasing foraging. In addition, phorid flies are very species-specific, and should in theory leave native ant species (the fire ants' prime competitor) unmolested.

Scientists at the US Agricultural Research Service also have been able to infect phorid flies with Kneallhazia solenopsae, a spore-producing insect pathogen, to control the population of red imported fire ants.[14] The flies are unharmed by the pathogen and serve as vectors in transmitting the disease to the ants. The pathogen is able to reduce red imported fire ant colonies from 53-100%, and may serve as an effective biological control for the ants.[15]

A virus, SINV-1,[16] has been found in about 20 percent of fire ant fields, where it appears to cause the slow death of infected colonies. It has proven to be self-sustaining and transmissible. Once introduced, it can eliminate a colony within three months. Researchers[17] believe the virus has potential as a viable biopesticide to control fire ants.[18]

In some cases, hastily adopted biological control agents can do more harm than good (such as the western mosquitofish in Australia), and it remains to be seen how much success biological control of the red imported fire ant will have.

Physical methods

Researchers have also been experimenting with extreme temperature change to exterminate RIFAs, such as injecting liquid nitrogen or pressurized steam into RIFA nests. Besides using hot steam, pouring boiling water into ant mounds has been found effective in exterminating their nests.[19] Folk remedies have often sought a rapid increase in temperature by soaking the nest in gasoline or kerosene and lighting it on fire, though this is potentially dangerous. Further, the burning of the nest is ineffective due the tendency of queens to be several feet underground. This confusion stems from the observation that fuel vapor has a near instantaneous lethal effect on the ants.[citation needed]

In Brisbane, Australia, colonies are being eradicated or effectively controlled by ground baiting with food laced with contraceptives that render the colony's queen infertile, and toxicants. Mass baiting was undertaken following detection of the ants around the port of Brisbane and in southwestern Brisbane in 2001. Widespread public reporting of suspect colonies (by sending in samples of ants for identification) allowed mapping of the ant's locations. This was combined with satellite imagery to determine the vegetated habitats most likely to be infiltrated by the ants, and the baits were targeted in these areas. Known infested areas were declared high-risk (Restricted Areas), and any material being moved from these areas which could harbour ants (soil, mulch, potted plants, potting mix, hay bales, construction machinery, etc.) had to be inspected prior to disposal or movement, and bulk waste sent to transfer stations for examination, treatment and disposal. The infestation was initially thought to cover 270 km2, with a density of up to 600,000 colonies/km2 on highly infested sites. As program activity refined data on the infested area, overall size grew to around 80,000 ha by 2006/7. At mid-2007 in the on-going nationally funded eradication campaign, fewer than 100 active colonies were located in the entire South-East Queensland area during the six months between September 2006 and February 2007. The focus of delivering eradication has now switched largely to surveillance, while control and validation measures are expected to continue until 2009. The six year eradication campaign has cost A$175 million to date, and has just secured funding in principle for a minimum of two more years.[20][21]

Genomics

A fire ant genome was sequenced in 2010.[22] This creates new opportunities for research on fire ant behavior, and offers new opportunities for directed control measures that minimize environmental impact. The sequence can be searched and downloaded at antgenomes.org.